Mr. Deepfakes, the internet’s leading site for “deepfake” porn, is shutting down, the company said Monday.
The site, which uses a cartoon image that seemingly resembles President Trump smiling and holding a mask as its logo, has been overrun by the nonconsensual “deepfake” videos.
The dangerous form of pornography photoshops a person’s face and likeness — typically that of female celebrities — into existing video content without the individual’s permission, often using artificial intelligence to do so.
“A critical service provider has terminated service permanently. Data loss has made it impossible to continue operation,” a notice at the top of the site said, earlier reported by 404 Media.
“We will not be relaunching. Any website claiming this is fake. This domain will eventually expire and we are not responsible for future use. This message will be removed around one week.”
Alternative porn sites, social media platforms and internet browsers have placed bans on the dangerous content, though they have struggled to block it entirely.
But Mr. Deepfakes includes more than 55,000 of these videos, and the site receives more than 6 million visits each month, German news site Der Spiegel reported last month.
It is unclear who runs Mr. Deepfakes. Der Spiegel reported that at least one person behind the site is a 36-year-old man living near Toronto, where he has been working in a hospital for years.
There is currently no federal law banning deepfake porn in the US, though several states, including New York and California, have passed legislation targeting the content.
Taylor Swift was famously the target of a throng of deepfakes last year, as sexually explicit, AI-generated images of the singer-songwriter spread across social media sites, like X.
The explicit content form was popularized in 2017 on Reddit, when a user started sharing videos that swapped female celebrities into existing porn footage.
Reddit closed the deepfake forum in 2018, but by that time, it had already grown to 90,000 users.
Pornhub and other porn sites also banned the AI-generated content, but Mr. Deepfakes quickly swooped in to create an entire platform for it.
Users could upload their own pornographic content to Mr. Deepfakes, or message creators to make requests.
But it also became a notable resource for people making and spreading nonconsensual deepfakes, with users sharing techniques and tips on how to make the content, according to 404 Media.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
